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The Double is a term in Football , which refers to winning a country's top division and its main cup competition in the same season. It can also mean beating a team both home and away in the same league season. In English football, it means traditionally winning both the top League (currently the FA Premier League and previously the Football League First Division ) and the FA Cup in the same season. However, other major trophies won in combination in the same season are also often referred to as Doubles or Trebles. THE ENGLISH ''DOUBLE'' ''List of teams who won¹ The Double in England:''
During the first half of the 20th century, many commentators came to believe that winning the league and cup double was impossible in the modern game, partially because of the number of teams over the decades who had come close but ultimately failed to achieve the feat, often supposedly because of fixture congestion. Tottenham's double in 1961, the first of the modern era, was therefore considered at the time to be a particularly remarkable achievement which proved the conventional wisdom wrong. However the double still remained a relatively rare achievement prior to the mid-1990s. Since the advent of the Premier League in 1992, the number of instances of clubs achieving the double has increased very dramatically, and hence has devalued the rarity value of the achievement since it succinctly indicates the on-field effect of the greatly increased spending power of a very few major clubs in comparison to the majority of competing clubs at the top level. Arsenal and Manchester United share the record of three double wins each. Arsenal are the only club to win a double in more than one decade (1970s, 1990s and 2000s). United's three doubles in the 1990s illustrates their domination of English football at that time. League and League Cup Double A rarer, and less coveted, double in English domestic football is that of winning the League championship and the League Cup . This feat was first achieved in 1978 by Nottingham Forest . Liverpool achieved this double no less than three times in succession (1982, 1983 and 1984). The last of these was won with the European Cup , making it a lesser but nonetheless notable Treble . Despite their dominance of the Premier League in the 1990s, Manchester United never managed to accomplish this double, as they usually fielded their reserves in the League Cup until 2005-2006; their closest effort was in 1993/1994, where they won the League and FA Cup, but lost the League Cup final to Aston Villa . The latest team to achieve it were Chelsea in 2005 when they won the English Premier League and League Cup . THE CUP DOUBLE The FA Cup and League Cup double was achieved by Arsenal in 1993, when they beat Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 in both games. In 2001, Liverpool achieved this double along with the UEFA Cup as part of their Cup Treble . In 2007, Chelsea F.C. also completed the Cup Double. OTHER ENGLISH DOUBLES Leeds United were the first English team to win a double involving European and domestic trophies. It was in 1968 when Leeds won the Football League Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup Chelsea also won the League Cup and the FA cup in 2007. "Football : Season Details : 1968" krysstal.com (accessed 17th Oct 2006). LEAGUE AND CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DOUBLES Winning the League and Champions League is considered another type of double. This was achieved by AC Milan in 1994, Ajax Amsterdam in 1995, Bayern Munich in 2001, Porto in 2004 and Barcelona in 2006. NEAR ''DOUBLES'' A great many sides over the years have come close to winning the coveted English league and F.A. Cup double but narrowly failed to do so by losing one or both of the trophies at the end of the season. The full list of these nearly men is:
OTHER ''DOUBLES'' The term is used outside of English football as well. One notable double-winning team in 2006 was Bayern Munich in Germany , which became the first team in the country's history to successfully defend a double. Inter Milan in Italy earned the double in an unusual manner in the same season, being awarded the Serie A title to go along with their on-field win in the Coppa Italia after initial league champions Juventus were stripped of the title in the aftermath of the 2006 Serie A Scandal . CSKA Moscow in Russia won the Russian Cup and Premire League in 2005, and the Urawa Reds won a double in Japan in 2006. The all-time leader for domestic doubles is Linfield , from Northern Ireland , United Kingdom — with 19 As Of May 2007. United States D.C. United won the first American double of the MLS Cup and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in 1996, the Chicago Fire won both in 1998, as did the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2005. D.C. United won 2 doubles consiting of the MLS Cup and MLS Supporters Shield in 1997 and 1999. Kansas City Wizards won the same double in 2000, and the Los Angeles Galaxy won both trophies in 2002. Luxembourg See Also: The Double (Luxembourg) The Double in . Unique ''Double'' West Bromwich Albion achieved a unique "Double" in 1931 when they became the first team to win FA Cup and promotion to the higher league in the same season (from Second Division, today's Championship to First Division, today's Premiership ). 76 years later, no other team has yet achieved this feat. All-time leader table See also NOTES |
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